Springdale Cemetery on a bitter Sunday evening

Adding to my usual seasonal confusion: A balmy 53 degrees on Dec. 21, the winter solstice, plummeting 30 degrees late that night and, much like a champion boxer falling down for the count, never rising again. Add two inches of snow and a constant 25 m.p.h. wind, gusting to nearly 40; winter hath cometh, lefteth and cometh yet again.

“Now commences the long winter evening around the farmer’s hearth, when the thoughts of the indwellers travel far abroad, and men are by nature and necessity charitable and liberal to all creatures. Now is the happy resistance to cold, when the farmer reaps his reward, and thinks of his preparedness for winter…”

Henry David Thoreau, “A Winter Walk,”Excursions, p.134.
The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920